May 29 (Reuters) - Walmart ( WMT ) said on Wednesday

that a technical issue in mid-March resulted in the retailer

overcharging customers at some stores in the United States.

Bloomberg News, which first reported the incident, said

Walmart ( WMT ) suffered a technical glitch on March 19 that prevented

price data from flowing to self-checkout kiosks at 1,600 stores.

The issue lasted for days and resulted in the company

overcharging customers on thousands of items including food,

clothes and appliances, the report said.

A spokesperson for Walmart ( WMT ), which operates more than 5,000

stores in the United States, said in an email that once it

discovered the problem it focused on affected customers.

"We've made it a priority to refund customers who were

overcharged, and we did not take action on the undercharges with

our customers," the spokesperson, Mischa Dunton, said.

Walmart ( WMT ) did not respond to Reuters' questions on the number

of products impacted or the amount of dollars that shoppers

overpaid. It also did not disclose how many stores were

impacted.

In January, Walmart ( WMT ) agreed to pay $45 million to settle a

class-action lawsuit in Florida alleging it overcharged shoppers

for bags of citrus fruit and some meat, poultry and seafood

products sold by weight. The company denied any wrongdoing.

Since the pandemic, Walmart ( WMT ) has invested billions of dollars

in upgrading its stores and the underlying technology that

powers thousands of its retail operations. In October last year,

it said it would invest $9 billion in U.S. stores including

adding more self-checkout options.

It has not always gone smoothly. In February, the Wall

Street Journal reported Walmart ( WMT ) suffered an outage where

thousands of registers were not able to process transactions,

while Bloomberg reported on Wednesday the company also endured a

glitch with its photo and vision centers earlier this year.